


Waking Up The Ghost

by IggyLikesPie



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, The House of Hades Spoilers, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5104157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IggyLikesPie/pseuds/IggyLikesPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and Nico's meeting with Cupid from Nico's POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up The Ghost

_No._

 

That was the first thought Nico had when facing Eros(/Cupid/that guy with a bow and arrow who wears diapers) was mentioned. It was then repeated amid other phrases including 'fuck', 'shit', and 'why me'.

 

Favonius kept talking, casually, revealing that he'd also been apparently stalking Nico. Fan-freaking-tastic. All he wanted to do was shadow walk away but the way his heart was thudding and how his palms were growing sweaty only told him that he'd end up in China. Again.

 

"What's he talking about?" Jason asked him, reminding Nico that he had a judging audience.

 

Was it possible to feel claustrophobic in a spacious hall? Well, it felt to Nico that yes, yes you godsdamn could.

 

"I don't know. Nothing." he managed to snap out. Really eloquent, really convincing, his family would be so proud.

 

Favonius arched both his eyebrows and his wings before almost shouting; "Nothing? The one you care for most... plunged into Tartarus, and you still won't allow the truth."

 

The words seemed to douse the dark haired boy in ice water, colder than the winters at his old school, colder than the Styx, colder than death itself.

 

He could feel Jason's eyes narrowing, watching him, judging him.

 

  
_Hedge_ , Nico told himself. _Talk round it, there's no need to open up that can of worms._

 

He repeated what they were there for again, in the vain hope of getting the winged wind spirit to listen.

 

"Ah..." the spirit sighed and Nico felt his heart sink, there was no way he was getting out of this. As soon as Favonius said 'trial', Nico's mind started to scream inside his skull.

 

If his father cared for him at all then he'd strike him down right then and there but no fissure opened up in the ground to swallow him.

 

Jason piped up then, having remembered some ancient tale from ye olde Greeke mythe-times. Nico drowned him out in favour of trying to compose and prepare himself for whatever he had to do so in order to appease the god of love.

 

His attention snapped back to Favonius when the words 'You must face the god of love' rang out in the air, sounding like a funeral knell inside the ancient cavern.

 

"Nico, you can do this, it might be embarrassing, but it's for the sceptre." Jason told him.

 

Embarrassing?

_Embarrassing?_

What would the goody-goody golden son of Jupiter know about embarrassing?

 

How could Jason possibly know about... about this  _thing_? 

This secret that he carried around with him.

This feeling that gave off icy tendrils, colder even than his Stygian blade.

The thought of knowing that, not only was he not fully human but also that, he was a freak, a weirdo, a _fag_.

 

It didn't matter. He'd lie and weasel and squirm out of this somehow, that's what he would do. He nodded once. "You're right. I- I'm afraid of no love god." But even as he said it, the words tasted bitter in his mouth.

 

The wind spirit started babbling again then, something about fruit and summer, Nico didn't care; he just wanted to get this over with.

 

"That's okay," he spoke over the end of the spirit's ramble. "Just take us to Cupid."

 

Although Nico was expecting to be transported by wind (as wind?), it didn't mean that he enjoyed it. He felt weightless as they sped across fields and towns but his stomach still lurched when they came to an almost sudden halt, in a courtyard of some Roman ruins, and were reformed into people.

 

Favonius made a comment lamenting the need for physical bodies but it wasn't until he introduced the ruins as 'the home of Cupid' did Nico really start listening. 

 

(He just wished he could get this over with. If he had to be exposed and humiliated, then he'd rather it be sooner rather than later so that he could work on repressing the entire experience.)

 

Cupid's name echoed across the sun-bleached stones and through empty halls as Jason had his assumptions about the love god battered out of the dry air.

 

Nico was backing up against one of the crumbling pillars, the hot, rough stone digging and clawing at his back, when Jason turned to him.

 

"Hey, man..." the son of Jupiter started but Nico waved him away. 

He didn't need his judging stares. 

He didn't need his pity. 

He didn't need anything.

 

The dark haired demi god could hear the grass lilting and withering around him. Oh gods, even more embarrassment, he just _had_  to lose control of his powers on top of everything else.

 

"Ah... I don't blame you for being nervous, Nico di Angelo. Do you know how _I_ ended up serving Cupid?" Favonius asked, still swinging his stupid bronze hoop.

 

"I don't serve anyone, especially not Cupid." Nico told the winged spirit, trying to muster courage that he didn't have and it showed in his voice.

 

"I fell in love with a mortal named Hyacinthus. He was _quite_  extraordinary."

 

'He.'

_'He.'_

_**'He.'** _

 

The word alone was like a knife to Nico's gut, digging and twisting, hollowing out his insides and showing the world what he was.

 

_Faggot. Freak. Weirdo. Broken. Wrong._

 

"He...?" Jason asked before pausing. "Oh..." He finally sighed, realisation lighting up his face like a sunbeam.

 

"Yes, Jason Grace. I fell in love with a _dude_. Does that shock you?"

 

Nico could barely hear Favonius over the thudding of his heart.

 

_'Does that shock you?'_

 

Memories from Westover Hall crawled out from the cracks in Nico's mental wall. The talk of other students, faceless and merciless whispers turning friends against each other, turning people's lives into a caged-in Hell, turning students into robots out of fear alone.

 

_'He's a fag, you know?'_

_'Shame, he's kinda cute.'_

 

_'Can't believe they let that dyke have lessons with the rest of us.'_

_'I always thought she was a bit butch.'_

 

Mutters and murmurs shared late at night or in passing in corridors, writing on toilet walls or notes passed in class.

 

_Dyke. Weirdo. Broken. Immoral. Faggot. Freak. Wrong. Diseased._

 

As Nico was (reluctantly) remembering his past, Favonius was recounting his own until-

 

"Quoits?" Jason asked, rolling the foreign word around his mouth like a wine taster would with a mouthful of the drink.

 

"A game with those hoops," Nico told him, trying to stop his voice from shaking. "Like horseshoes."

 

"Sort of," Favonius considered, as if either of the boys standing before him gave a flying fuck about some ancient game of hoopla right then.

 

The wind spirit concluded his tale of his tragic love with how he had killed Hyacinthus and how Cupid saved him from Apollo's wrath by having him work for him. Forever.

 

The name of the love god echoed around the ruins again after it had left Favonius' lips, like the crying of cicadas, like the whispers at Westover.

 

  
_Cupid_ , the stones chittered.

_Cupid_ , the pillars called.

_Cupid_ , the sky whispered.

_Cupid_ , the weeds cried.

 

"That would be my cue." Favonius announced to no one in particular. "Think long and hard about how you proceed, Nico di Angelo." he continued, turning to said demi god. "You cannot lie to Cupid. If you let your anger rule you... well, your fate will be even sadder than mine."

 

With that, the spirit disappeared in a swirl of red and gold scattering in the wind.

 

  
_'Sadder than his'? How could it get any sadder?_ , Nico thought to himself as he and Jason drew their blades. He already had to watch... _him_  with someone else. He saw exactly what it would be like to be with him but at the same time he could never touch, taste, or take. He could only watch, want, and wallow.

 

  
_So, you come to claim the sceptre._  The voice was like the brutal wind that rushed past you when you stood on a cliff side overlooking the ocean; it was harsh, it was sharp, and it was unforgiving.

 

"Cupid? Where are you?" Jason called, raising his sword as if to attack the air itself.

 

_Where you least expect me, as Love always is._ Nico wanted to laugh, or cry, maybe applaud, he didn't know. Of course Cupid would speak in riddles. Of fucking course.

 

Before the son of Hades could call out to the god as well, Jason was knocked through the air, down a set of stone steps, and into a dug out basement.

 

While Cupid asked Jason about his love life, Nico ran to his side. "You okay?"

 

"Yeah, just sucker punched." Jason took his offered hand as he wheezed out his response, he certainly sounded winded.

 

  
_Oh, did you expect me to play fair?_  Cupid laughed. _I am the god of love._ he proclaimed. _I am **never**  fair._

 

Nico felt the rush of air but was too late in reacting as an arrow materialised heading straight for him. Jason, however, managed to bat it away with the back of his sword so that it exploded against a stone outcrop, throwing up dust and chunks of rock.

 

The other demi god took his arm and ran with him up the steps as another jet of wind sent a column crumbling down onto where they had just been standing.

 

Nico felt as if the god was toying with him, dragging out every moment so as to fully savour the humiliation and fall of Hades' freakiest child.

 

"Is this guy Love or Death?" Jason gritted out.

 

  
_Ask your friends. Frank, Hazel, and Percy, they met my counterpart, Thanatos._  Cupid told them, his voice coming from everywhere and no where.  _We are not so different. Except Death is sometimes kinder._

 

Nico was really feeling that statement right about then. "We just want the sceptre! We're trying to stop Gaia. Are you on the gods' side or not?" he screamed at no one. _I'd much rather face Thanatos_ , Nico muttered internally. _At least I can understand death._

 

_Love is on every side and no one's. Don't ask what Love can do for you._  More riddles, just what they needed. Why couldn't gods just speak normally? One day it's prophecies, the next it's riddles, then it's omens in the sky, the list went on.

 

"Great, now he's spouting greeting card messages." Jason said, looking around the stone plaza with his sword raised, looking for any disturbance around them.

 

Movement behind them and Jason spun, slicing through the air and getting a splatter of liquid gold across the stones in return. Damn Jason and his reflexes, Nico was just trying to stay upright and alert.

 

There was too much riding on this, no matter how much it hurt he had to stay up.

 

Cupid was talking again, his voice whistling like wind through summer trees, but Nico was remembering something Bianca had told him so long ago now.

 

_If you get in a fight, never go to the floor. You go to the floor and that's it; you have to stay up._

 

... _only a child of the Underworld can summon the dead legions. And only an officer of Rome can lead them._  Cupid was saying.

 

"But..." Jason started but trailed off, never finishing his thought.

 

Nico was glancing around, feeling more and more like a trapped animal with every moment that passed. He'd seen a fight at Westover once where the three attackers had chased their prey into a corner of the yard before closing in and that was how Nico felt: like a scared animal out in the open but being watched, like Cupid was circling them and just waiting for their guard to fall even slightly.

 

"Just leave that to us, Nico can summon-"

 

And there it was, the hole in their armour and Cupid took his shot.

 

Nico barely had time to gasp before the arrow imbedded itself in his sword arm.

 

"Nico!" Jason called out but it was fuzzy.

 

The arrow dissolved away in the wind leaving no wound but Nico could _feel_  it. 

It started out like the burn and itch of nettles, traversing up and down his arm, seeping into his muscles making them tense and relax in spasms. It clawed its way through his veins like Greek fire, leaving a raw burn that flayed his nerves.

 

"Enough games! Show yourself!" Nico roared, fighting to keep his eyes open and to stay standing; the burn in his blood not dissipating but only growing stronger, more demanding.

 

_It is a costly thing, looking upon the true face of love._  Cupid mused and Nico wanted to scream. They didn't have time for another backstory; he was moments away from blurting out his guts or coughing them up and Cupid was reminiscing about his wife and how godsdamn handsome he is.

 

His entire body hurt like a _fucking bitch_.

 

Jason raised his sword to the sky somewhere behind him and to his right. A bolt of lightning struck a spot across the courtyard and the god stopped talking, the silence seeming to swallow any slight sound and suffocate it.

 

For a moment Nico dared to hope: maybe he wouldn't have to face the love god, maybe they could grab the sceptre and leave, maybe he could pretend none of this happened, maybe, _maybe_ , **_maybe_**.

 

His fantasy was shattered, however, when Jason went flying (not by his own accord) and the god's voice returned to the yard. _A good try but Love cannot be pinned down so easily_.

 

Nico turned in the direction his fellow demi god had been flung to see a wall collapse nearly on top of him.

 

To say that Nico had had enough would be an understatement.

 

"Stop it!" he exploded, turning around in circles, searching for any sign of the god. "It's me you want. Leave him alone!"

 

_Poor Nico di Angelo. Do you know what **you**  want, much less what I want?_ the god seemed to whisper directly to the son of Hades, even having the nerve to sound disappointed, like he knew Nico enough to be disappointed in him.

 

_My beloved Psyche risked everything in the name of Love._  Cupid continued. _It was the only way to atone for her lack of faith. And you - what have you risked for Love?_

 

Nico felt his lips curl back off his teeth in a feral snarl. "I've been to Tartarus and back, you don't scare me." he growled.

 

_I_ _scare you very, very much. Face me._  Cupid taunted. _Be honest._  the god goaded.

 

Nico focused on pulling his power up from beneath the earth, calling to the dead who littered the earth like a second layer of skin and ushered them forward to fight. The ground quaked - the stones splitting, the earth gaping - as the dead pushed up, inching ever closer.

 

"Give us Diocletian's sceptre, we don't have time for games." he said, forcing calm into his voice.

 

_Games?_  Cupid almost howled, flinging Nico side ways as if he was nothing more than a ragdoll. _Love is no game! It is no flowery softness. It is hard work - it is a quest that never ends. It requires everything from you - especially the truth. Only then does it yield rewards._

 

"Nico," Jason called from behind him. "What does this guy _want_  from you?"

 

_Oh, I don't know, to kill me with my own stupid thoughts, maybe??!_ , Nico thought bitterly.

 

_Tell him, Nico di Angelo. Tell him how you are a coward, afraid of yourself and your own feelings. Tell him the real reason you left Camp Half-Blood and why you are always alone._

 

The words were the final blow to the wall Nico had been constructing for so long in an attempt to block out so much: Westover, Camp Half-Blood, media, random people in the street, _him_.

 

_Diseased. Weirdo. Faggot. Immoral. Freak. Creep. Loser. Wrong. Broken. Evil. Bitch. Whore. Queer._

 

Nico screamed, the burning under his skin finally escaping as the skeletons escaped the earth. Skeletal hands found the surface and dragged up the rest of their form; clacking and crunching as bones ground together and as ossein scraped against stone.

 

The dead crowded around him, more and more pulling themselves up and joining the ranks. Some glinted in the sunlight, tarnished armour clinging to their grotesque forms, while some wore ripped and filthy togas, and some wore nothing at all but they each faced various directions, on the look out for the love god.

 

_Will you hide among the dead, as you always do?_  Cupid continued to taunt, his voice right next to Nico's ear but also coming from 100 miles away at the same time.

 

The son of Hades could feel the waves of hatred rolling off of him; shame, dispair, and revultion poured out of him and seeped into the air around him, strangling the weeds that peaked up between the stones of the plaza.

 

A million memories ran through his head, each one splattered and tainted with things no normal person would feel.

 

_Seeing Percy fight a manticore in Maine, standing next to his sister and feeling an all-consuming sense of awe._

_Percy promising to keep Bianca safe and Nico had trusted him, he had trusted him so completely! How could he not? He was **Mythomagic**  brought to life, a true hero, a trustworthy hero._

_His hero returning and telling him that his sister had died. He had screamed, tears leaking down his still-olive cheeks, as he unwillingly rose skeletons from the earth but forcing them to return before they could hurt Percy. He was a liar, Nico hated him, but at the same time, he couldn't. So he ran; away from the camp, away from his powers, away from that **thing** that had lodged itself in his chest and offered him images of Percy as he slept._

_Percy._

_**Percy.** _

**_PERCY._ **

 

Nico's vision blurred as he blinked back his tears, watching his soldiers fight with an invisible foe that sent them flying, letting them shatter against the ground without a second thought, but they kept coming. The dark haired boy could feel the dead beneath the surface and dragged them up to fight, an endless stream of warriors thanks to the land's rich and bloody past.

 

_Interesting!_  Cupid cried, sounding delighted and intrigued. _Do you have the courage, after all?_

 

_Lie!_  his insides screamed. _Get out of this like you have before; 'fake it until you make it'. You're normal. You're normal. You're n-_

 

"I left Camp Half-Blood because of love..." Nico stuttered out, the black void around him not flickering at all. "Annabeth... she-"

 

_Still hiding,_  the love god called, obliterating another undead soldier. _You do not have the strength._

 

And it wasn't the first time Nico had been called weak.

 

_'_ _What's wrong, fag? Can't fight back? You not strong enough? Did you use all your energy su-'_

 

Bianca had found them then, two older students pummeling him. He had been organising his _Mythomagic_  set in the corridor next to the Phys Ed changing room - somewhere people rarely visited during lunch - when they had claimed the 'little nerd's a fag' and that he had been staring at them when they got changed.

 

He hadn't stood a chance.

 

His sister had hit one of them in the face, sending them both running. _'You're not weak,'_ she had told him. _'You are so much stronger than you know.'_

 

'Not weak'? What would she say now? What would she say to her brother, her broken, diseased, freak of a brother, now? What would she say about him being a fa-

 

"Nico, it's okay." Jason told him, reminding him that he wasn't alone, that there was someone else there to get the sceptre, to judge him. "I get it."

 

The dark haired boy looked over his shoulder at his companion. "No, you don't, there's no way you could understand." he hissed.

 

Golden Boy Jason, beloved praetor of New Rome, son of the King of the Gods: how could he understand? How could he _possibly_ understand? 

 

Cupid's sigh was an echo of wind. "And so you run away again, from your friends, from yourself."

 

The god said it as if Nico had another choice. Why would he stay when he knew what he was and where he wasn't wanted.

 

Turning back to the fray before him, Nico screamed; "I don't have friends!" he spat the word and it left him feeling foreign to his tongue. "I left Camp Half-Blood because I don't belong! I'll never belong!"

 

The skeletons were pinning an invisible entity now and Nico indulged his fantasies of torturing the god as he had been tortured. To stand over the love god and make him hurt how he had been hurt over and over and _over_  again. To rip open his muscles and watch as ichor painted the god's old home gold.

 

"Leave him alone, Cupid. This isn't..." Jason started but didn't finish, somewhere in the back of Nico's mind it registered that he did that a lot (a louder part, however, shouted at him that he still relied on other people to defend him).

 

"I- I wasn't in love with Annabeth." Nico announced, the words fighting their way out of his throat and into the warm, summer air.

 

"You were jealous of her," Jason said in the same tone he had used when Favonius had said he was g- "That's why you didn't want to be around her. Especially why you didn't want to be around... him. It makes total sense."

 

Nico felt himself drain. The aura around him dissipated, the dead collapsed, and his knees felt weak.

 

He wanted to cry. He wanted to curl up and cry like a child. He was weak. "I hated myself, I hated Percy Jackson." But the name still have him some kind of comfort, it still gave him a warmth in his chest that he hated.

 

The demi god stared at the ground but in his peripheral vision he could see the god shimmer into appearance; a tall man with dark hair, white wings, and a bow and arrow held firmly in his hand.

 

"I had a crush on Percy, that's it. That's the big secret." Nico had nothing left to hide. He was ripped open and exposed, his innards laid bare for the god to see. "Happy now?" he growled, looking up to Cupid and glaring at his crimson eyes.

 

The god's face seemed to turn sympathetic as he gazed at him. "Oh, I wouldn't say Love always makes you happy. Sometimes it makes you incredibly sad. But at least you've _faced_  it now. That's the only way to conquer me." And with that, the god dissolved into the wind, just as Favonius had done, just as his arrow had done.

 

Left behind where he had stood lay an ivory staff topped with three golden eagles and a globe of black marble - the sceptre of Diocletian.

 

Nico picked it up before turning back to Jason warily.

 

He mentally prepared himself to be told to hand over the staff and leave, to never return to either camp, to just go and die somewhere.

 

He could hear the calls already.

 

_Broken. Faggot. Diseased. Weirdo. Wrong. Freak. Whore. Corrupt. Abomination. Immoral. Evil. Loser. Queer. Bitch. Creep. Pig. Insane._

 

"If the others found out-" he started.

 

"If the others found out you'd have that many more people to back you up and to unleash the fury of the gods on anyone who gives you trouble." Jason tried to reassure him but it was all just words, it always was. 

 

Nico settled for scowling at the other boy.

 

"But it's your call," Jason conceded. "Your decision to share or not. I can only tell you-"

 

"I don't feel that way any more," He felt himself say.

 

_Liar!_ , his mind shouted back at him.

 

"I mean... I gave up on Percy. I was young and impressionable, and I- I don't..." His voiced cracked over the last few words, cutting his sentence short.

 

_You're a liar!_ , his mind hissed at him.

 

He could feel Jason staring at him, judging him, studying him, even as they organised how to get back to the _Argo II_.

 

But then, who could blame him? Maybe he should be studied. Highlighted as the freak that he was.

 

After all, he was Nico di Angelo; demi god son of Maria di Angelo and Hades. Nico di Angelo; the boy out of time. Nico di Angelo; the nomad who had no real home. Nico di Angelo; the gay half-blood.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate and love Nico/Percy; I want Nico to be happy but at the same time I ship Percabeth so hard that I can't bare to break them apart.  
> This is the result.
> 
> Name from the 10 Years song 'Waking Up The Ghost'.
> 
> beta'd by infinitejellybean  
> my tumblr is bakura-reads-yaoi
> 
> (I should really be working on all my other stuff.)


End file.
